Marshall McLuhan was a Smart Guy

I live in a small enough town that I remember being one of the first people around to own an ipod. True story. One of those big old white ones with the scroll wheel on it. Lots of kids at school asked me about it, but my celebrity was pretty short lives as in only a few weeks they started showing up all over.

I remember getting it and wondering what I was going to fill it up with. Then I discovered Adam Curry and RSS and the podcasts started flowing in. A whole new world. The fact that ipods were being very quickly adopted made podcasting come alive. A new way to participate in the media landscape was being born. Even though podcasting already seems to be slowly dying off, at the time when it first became mainstream, it had the potential to change who was able to produce media and how we consumed it.

I’m wondering now about tablets and literacy. Are they a device that changes things for written text like the combination of ipods and RSS do for audio? (I know I’ve been beating on this drum lately and I apologize if you are sick of it already, but I need to spend some time thinking through these issues. And hey, I pay the bills around here….. so…… )

Written text has been the same as long as it has existed. Certainly it has moved through different forms of appearance (scroll, letter, folio, novel, etc) But it has always been the same. Produced by one or more individuals and consumed by a single person at a time. Even the advance of dedicated ereaders didn’t change this fact. Text was text.

But what happens when we use an app (Kobo, Kindle, etc) to interact with written text on a screen? Does the act of reading become fundamentally different? A written text of this type becomes the centre of an information ecosystem instead of a stand alone artifact. Depending on the app that you are using it may allow you to highlight certain text and make notes on your device. It allows you to highlight something and easily share it with others via email, twitter or facebook. It allows you to pursue links that might be embedded directly in the text, instantly track down references from endnotes, search for further information on the same topic, get words defined and segue off onto tangental lines of thinking. You can find and download other books on the same topic or written by the same author. While others may argue that we could do all of those things before the combination of apps, tablet and internet combination came along, the ease and ability to complete these tasks all without leaving your couch makes me wonder if this is something different.

Podcasting quickly grew into something different after Apple decided it would have a section of iTunes dedicated to these productions. It quickly lost its indie feel when corporations began to produce their own full programs complete with sponsorship and commercials.

What happens now that tablets and internet connections and apps like Kobo and Kindle become widespread? Does the act of reading become different for those with the money to afford the technology? Do those without the technology, who cannot forge the instant international connections and community around a given text read with an “accent?” Are people reading paper books missing out on all of the possibilities that reading any given text might be? Similar to what happens with any software project, I wonder if our reading skills are being forked?

We’ve built these tools, but now they are shaping our habits, what we do with them, and how we interact with the media we produce and consume. Are software developers and corporations defining what it means to be literate?

6 thoughts on “Marshall McLuhan was a Smart Guy”

“Are software developers and corporations defining what it means to be literate?”

I’ve been podcasting since 2007 and you’ve raised some great points but I think there’s one thing missing in your calculations.

For the last half century ONLY corporations defined what it meant to be literate. ONLY corporations created textbooks. Schools, parents, students were reduced to accepting the offerings from the corporate publishers or going without. In subtle and insidious ways, the corporations have been shaping literacy in the form of tests, texts, and research to support their agendas.

It’s baked into the paradigm. When you’re looking for texts, for materials to use in your class…pre-internet, you had to go with what was in the catalog. Post-internet, not so much, but we still tend to look at those corporate offerings as somehow superior, as having an inherent value because they were, presumably, vetted and produced to “professional standards” — in short, *because* they were corporate.

You and your colleagues in the open classroom project have been living the alternative and yet you ask the question? Perhaps because that open classroom project gives you the perspective that permits the question to begin with?

Yes, a lot of what happens on the device now is controlled, is closed garden, is shaping how we use those tools.

But those aren’t the only tools.

I still create podcasts. I still write on a linux based computer. There are still alternatives to the corporate, to the closed. Even while RSS lozenges are no longer endemic and podcasting has to share the platform with the slick media, there’s still room for people like me, with an audience of a few tens of thousands built over years of production. There’s still room for new startups to find an audience and flourish without the need for millions (or even thousands) of dollars of venture capital money. The means of production are still in our hands. The only question is, are we willing to lift the tools and do the work?

So while, yes, corporations are *still* defining what it means to be literate, they are not the only voice, not the only factor in the equation. YOU, in fact, are one of the reasons they’re not the only voice any longer. You, and CoolCatTeacher, and BudtheTeacher and a host of others keep asking, keep pushing, and keep creating new models.

The idea of literacy has been forked for at least 20 years and you’re one of the branches. Don’t stop now.

“The future is already here. It’s just not uniformly distributed.” – William Gibson.

Thanks for stopping by and leaving a well thought out, detailed comment. What concerns me about much of this is the fact that as the technology is changing, corporations like Apple (just for example) are designing the tools that we are using to be literate. Certainly we can get our voices out there online through sites like this blog (I’m a huge supporter of WordPress) and audacity (love open source projects), but the actual tools themselves, which are allowing us nw forms of expression are being designed by corporations. I don’t believe that scrolls, folios, novels, etc were designed by corporations. They evolved over time to meet the needs of people. The tools that we have today aren’t. They are, as you say, closed gardens. We control the content, but not the tools

I am very interested in open source tools like linux, etc. Are they different, better, easier to use? Possibly not. But they are created in a different spirit, in a different light. I think that’s important. That being said, I am writing this reply on my iPad, having seen your comment first on my MacBook pro. I’m a hypocrite. I know it.

Thanks for stopping by. We still have plenty of thinking to do about this.

” I don’t believe that scrolls, folios, novels, etc were designed by corporations. They evolved over time to meet the needs of people. The tools that we have today aren’t. They are, as you say, closed gardens. We control the content, but not the tools”

My point is that Apple isn’t the only tool. Nor is Android. Amazon isn’t the only bookstore and even if they were, I could still sell my books from my own site. I don’t think Apple is defining literacy any more than French does.

I agree with this. I only wonder about the dominance of the tool in the world. Does the dominance of the iPad place it in a special position when it comes to defining literacy? Does it have as much power or sway as Fench? ( to use your example) is this new and different that a corporation is in this role? I hope that there are enough dissenters to keep pushing for an open definition and for open hackable tools.

I think one of the ideas is that the iEnvironment isn’t as endemic as it might appear. I own a old iPod nano, but I don’t use it any more. The Apple ecosystem exists alongside me and while I have to do a little work around to get my android phone, my linux computers, and my podcast/ebook production introduced into the Applesphere, it’s not egregiously difficult.

But that’s a good question and there’s not disputing that Apple has a massive advantage in the idea-space.

Have you read a book called “The Artificial Ape”? It’s a look at exactly that notion from flint axes through to computers. Very interesting how closely linked human behaviour and intelligence is with the tools we use.